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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26434375">I'll Be Seeing You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric'>hopeless_eccentric</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>(Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Penumbra Podcast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Non-Binary Character, F/F, Fluff, Nonbinary Juno Steel, Reminiscing, Weddings, Yearning, background jupeter, ben's only mentioned sorry guys, buddy aurinko hold my hand challenge, buddy loves her wife and i wont shut up about it, can you yearn for your own wife, difficulty sleeping, juno teaches buddy how to dance for her wedding and it's soft, mentioned/former grief, vaguely a character study</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:20:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,239</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26434375</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t think that would be too hard,” Juno considered. “Does this song mean something in particular for you two? First meeting or something?”</p><p>Buddy chuckled, her mind passing fond fingertips over the memory of her hammering heart when they first locked eyes. However, her mind brushed aside that memory in favor of another. She and Vespa, still high off of the euphoria of a perfect heist, heard the song off of a music machine on a hauler they had commandeered. Vespa had spun her around and been spun in return, the two of them laughing that they could have such fun and kiss so sweetly to a song about saying farewell. </p><p>“Something like that,” she replied instead. </p><p> </p><p>In which Juno teaches Buddy a step or two.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Benzaiten Steel &amp; Juno Steel, Buddy Aurinko &amp; Juno Steel, Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay, Minor or Background Relationship(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>(Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921492</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>117</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I'll Be Seeing You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>turns out im incapable of writing any vesbud that isnt soft as all hell</p><p>Also, this was done as a commission for an anon on tumblr!! I'm doing free penumbra commissions rn (i know, kind of an oxymoron, but i do like writing what people want to see written), so feel free to send one my way if you want!!</p><p>Title from I'll Be Seeing You by Billie Holiday. I didn't write this one about any song in particular, but fucking hell if that one doesn't fit (definitely a listening rec)</p><p>Content warnings for past grief/mourning, mentioned nightmares, blood mention in a metaphor, mention of past incarceration</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Buddy had more sleepless nights than she would’ve liked to admit. She had enough, in fact, that she worked her way into some semblance of a routine. </p><p>If Vespa didn’t wake along with her, she’d leave a note, signed with a flourish and whatever little doodle of a flower or heart came to her hand. She hadn’t ever been a particularly good artist, but Vespa never seemed to mind. Buddy distinctly remembered one misshapen little attempt at a cat being called adorable, and even if she’d initially laughed at such a descriptor, she held those three syllables close to her breast like a babe to its mother. There was a certain beauty in being adorable for someone, even if it had been half a joke when the words first left Vespa’s lips. </p><p>Buddy told herself she didn’t pace past the quarters so she didn’t wake her crewmates, but she knew well she simply didn’t want to run into any of them unexpectedly while in this state. None of them slept as well as they should, and running into other restless crewmen with their eyes a million miles away, yet dark and festering with pity was about the last thing Buddy wanted when she was already feeling particularly bad. </p><p>She wanted to be in bed. She wanted to be asleep at her fiancée’s side, limbs so tangled together that they might knit a sweater between the two of them. Most of all, she wanted her heart to quit thrashing like a dead fish in her throat and her mind to forget what Vespa looked like falling past all those stories a thousand years ago. </p><p>When Buddy left her bed and took a back route away from the quarters, she came to the same spot every time and pretended to look busy. It was, after all, a very good place to look busy. </p><p>The ship’s window stretched up twice her height, as rounded and clear as an eye as it beheld the swirling blues and purples of Outer Rim planets floating far below. A bench sat in front of the glass in expectation of tourists who might want to stare out at the cosmos like fish at an aquarium. </p><p>Buddy found her same place as always on the far right end of the bench and sat down, letting her sleep-weary bones creak in protest of the ship’s too-cold atmospheric regulation. She took a deep breath of the drifting air, and found the cold was far kinder on the lungs that it was the joints. Just like every single night before. </p><p>There was a kind of comfort in bringing herself back to the ground in the same place every time, even if she kept a different excuse for being awake at her side. Even as the endless void below brought different swirling masses of planets and stars and comets into view, the glass eye of the window stayed the same, and the great, gentle remembrance that she was in the present took its kindly place within the silvery walls as well. </p><p>That night’s excuse for being awake lilted from her comms at her side. When planning heists and juggling theories all became too difficult, there was always one bit of work that welcomed her back with open arms. She’d always smile when she remembered it was real. Buddy Aurinko was engaged, soon to be married to the woman who had held her heart in her hands for almost two decades. There was always a wedding to be planned. </p><p>However, the song she had been considering for a first dance wasn’t quite the right tempo, and the lyrics didn’t seem to entirely fit what Buddy was hoping for. She reached over to the comms and switched to the next song, which she skipped over within moments. She wasn’t sure how that one ended up on her playlist of potential first dance songs in the first place. </p><p>An audible sigh left her lips when the next song started. She knew the opening piano by heart, even if she had never seen, nor touched such an instrument. It wasn’t the right tempo, nor was she entirely sure how to dance to it, but it had been their song, and that was what mattered. </p><p>That song in particular had belonged to a pair of thieves living in limbo between the thought that they would live forever and the thought that they would die young in a blaze of glory. It was the song of two people who grabbed life by the horns and appreciated it, dammit, because they wouldn’t be here long and they were determined that whatever time they had to be Buddy and Vespa, Vespa and Buddy, they would use it to burn the brightest that the galaxy had ever seen. </p><p>Buddy found it ironic that two people like that had ever paid too much attention to a song that slow. It lilted and ached between lines, and despite its speed, she never once heard the singer take a breath. When she was younger, she remembered making a joke or two about how they had made a song about saying goodbye “their song” just because they liked the sound of it. </p><p>Nowadays, she felt it was fitting. She spent a decade on Balder seeing Vespa’s face in shooting stars and her eyes in the misshapen satellite of a moon that hovered above, for they were the only two beautiful things in such a place. They were the only things that might compare to her Vespa. Buddy had a feeling a poet might shrivel if placed in a cell there for over a week. </p><p>She loved the song when they were young and invincible and half-danced to it in whatever way they knew how. She held a bitter hatred for it while in prison. She felt every one of its lines ache like a bloody hole in her chest when she lived in the Cerberus Province, for it was one of many songs that had a habit of leaking from the old music machines. </p><p>Now, she felt it only right to put a final, happy meaning on that song. It had trailed behind her like a ghost, never truly leaving even when Buddy hadn’t heard it in years. It was like Vespa, in that matter. She supposed that was why she loved it so. </p><p>The song ended, so she put it on again, just in time to catch Juno stepping into the room, then immediately turning on his heel to leave. </p><p>“No, no, if you want to stare out a window, don’t let me stop you, darling,” Buddy sighed. </p><p>Juno crept back into the room as if trying to mind the volume of his footfalls. He looked little more alert than she, which was to say weighed down with exhaustion, yet wide-eyed with an unpleasant and unexpected wakefulness. She felt comfort ebb through her chest at the sight of his eyepatch and the knowledge that he too preferred his eye covered, even in the assumed absence of company. </p><p>“Is that Ransom’s robe?” she chuckled as he took a seat on the other end of the bench. </p><p>“It used to be.” </p><p>“You wear it well,” she smiled. </p><p>“That’s probably why he hasn’t stolen it back yet,” Juno snorted. “What’s the song for?”</p><p>“Wedding preparations never sleep,” Buddy returned with a sigh that was just a bit too heavy. She reached to pause the music, but Juno stopped her with a shake of his head. </p><p>“It’s nice,” he interjected. “When are you thinking about using this one?”</p><p>“Well, I was thinking it might be nice for a first dance, though I’m afraid I don’t quite know what steps I’d do to a song of this tempo,” Buddy admitted.</p><p>“My brother was a dancer,” Juno began, face contorting oddly in the faint blue light off of the nearby planet. Buddy couldn’t quite put her finger on the expression, but it looked as if he was stifling a wince. “I wasn’t ever as good as him when he tried to teach me, but I think I might be able to help.”</p><p>“Are you offering to dance with me, Juno?” Buddy smiled. </p><p>“If it’s overstepping—”</p><p>Buddy was already standing, her hand outstretched. </p><p>“I’ll take that as a yes,” Juno returned. </p><p>He took her by the arm in a way that suggested she might lead and silently guided her hands to their proper positions. Buddy was a quicker learner than she would have expected, or perhaps, Juno was merely a good teacher. </p><p>Juno guided himself through a spin when Buddy failed to raise her arm at the right time and murmured “left” and “right” when her feet tripped around his. He caught her hands when they fell too low and walked her through how to dip her partner. When it didn’t go well the first time, they walked through the step again and again, and all the while, that gentle music flowed from her comms like cool water through a stream in some forest a million miles away. </p><p>“That spin’s gonna be easier in heels,” Juno said after they both tripped through what looked like a formal dance interrupted by an earthquake. “For both parties.”</p><p>“You’re not rusty, are you, darling?” Buddy chuckled, righting herself in a slightly too rigid amalgamation of the leading position. Juno fixed her hands into more comfortable, and likely less technically correct spots, and continued. </p><p>“Haven’t had anyone to dance with in a while,” he shrugged. “And usually I’m not doing this at four in the morning.”</p><p>“When was the last time you danced like this?”</p><p>“Well, if you’re not counting the Gilded Globe heist, not since I was a kid, really. We had to take classes in school, which was bullshit, but my brother really liked it and wanted some help to practice,” Juno reminisced, his eye going glassy as he spoke. If Buddy looked at it for long enough, she could almost make out that great blue gas giant out the window behind them. </p><p>Buddy had enough experience of the world to know when someone didn’t particularly want to talk about something, so she walked Juno through another spin and let the topic of conversation fall away. </p><p>“You’re getting better,” Juno noticed. </p><p>“It pays, as a thief, to learn quickly,” Buddy smiled. </p><p>“You think I’ll be able to teach Vespa quick enough to keep from getting gutted?” Juno snorted. </p><p>“No,” Buddy returned. “I suppose I might be able to reverse-engineer the following part from what I know. We never did dance to this one properly, so I suppose there’s some meaning in that.”</p><p>“I don’t think that would be too hard,” Juno considered. “Does this song mean something in particular for you two? First meeting or something?”</p><p>Buddy chuckled, her mind passing fond fingertips over the memory of her hammering heart when they first locked eyes. However, her mind brushed aside that memory in favor of another. She and Vespa, still high off of the euphoria of a perfect heist, heard the song off of a music machine on a hauler they had commandeered. Vespa had spun her around and been spun in return, the two of them laughing that they could have such fun and kiss so sweetly to a song about saying farewell. </p><p>“Something like that,” she replied instead. </p><p>If Juno had been more awake, he might have pressed. Instead, Buddy saw camaraderie and understanding walking hand in hand in his eye, and he merely nodded instead. </p><p>Buddy supposed she could psychoanalyze their song for days, but the fact of the matter was that she liked it. She liked the way the ambient chords lilted together, and she had liked them the first time she heard it. That hadn’t changed with every repeat of the song, even as she continued to pause her early morning dancing lessons just to replay the tune. It was romantic when she had someone to hold and it was haunting when she wished someone were there to haunt her. The song ached when she needed it to ache, and tasted like early morning sunshine when she wanted it to. </p><p>She supposed there was something inherently romantic in being missed. One could become a kind of light, their absence as potent as their presence. She also supposed there was something terribly beautiful in an end to yearning as well. </p><p>Perhaps she liked the song because it mourned with the pain of the past, and yet smiled with the promise of new days kinder than the ones she had left behind. </p><p>Buddy danced, spun her equally sleepless crewmate, and thought of the next morning. The sun would not rise, but the lights would come on, and her Vespa might emerge with her hair mussed by a pillow and sleep still clinging to her like a desperate lover. Buddy would kiss her fiancée good morning, and promise a gift when their schedules were kind enough to leave them a moment together. </p><p>When she had learned the dance far too well to warrant dancing any longer, Juno made an excuse about going back to bed. Buddy sent him off with a brief hug, then sat back upon her bench on the same spot as usual, eyes closed as the same song played from her comms. </p><p>Buddy felt her face bloom into a smile when she thought of that dazzling future once more. It was quite nice to have one, after all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>wowee y'all i am SOFT</p><p>Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I'll play the saxophone on your roof at four in the morning</p><p>Find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 for one of my free penumbra commissions, or just to hang out!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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